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THE 



RELATION OF THE MTIOIAL GOVERMENT 



TO 



PUBLIC EDUCATION: 



i 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE NATIONAL TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION, 
AT CLEYELAND, OHIO, AUG. 17, 1810, 






tL, 



BY JOHN EATON, JR., 



U. S. COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION. 



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^ 






THE 



EELATION OF THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT 



TO 



PUBLIC EDUCATION. 



The relation of the National Government 
to public education, discussed by a German 
in Berlin, would suggest the following of 
the imperial decree from the lips of William 
the First, by the Grace of God King of 
Prussia, through its various effects— the 
action of the ministry, the collection and 
disbursement of school revenues, the foun- 
dation and furnishing of institutions for 
superior and elementary instruction, of 
normal schools for the training of teachers, 
of technical schools for the special training 
and preparation for industries, holding 
every child of declared age due to his 
school and compelling his attendance, en- 
forcing an intelligence so universal that in 
1866-7 less than four per cent, of the con- 
scripts to thearmycould not read and write: 
discussed by a Frenchman in Paris, Napo- 
leon would take the place of William in 
the decree, and the same general line 
would direct tlie argument, reaching results 
showing a marked difference in the excel- 
lencies of method and the universality of 
intelligence; thirty per cent, of the con- 
scripts being unable to read and write ; 
were it discussed by a Cliinaman in Pekin, 
the same central force would be remarked, 
a great universality noted, while the offi- 
cers of tlie government would be found to 
have obtained their official positions 
through tlie success attained by competi- 
tive examination into which all tlie male 
youth of the country were privileged to 
enter; were the discussion by an Eng- 
lishman in London, it would represent the 
national power as supreme to direct the 
minutest educational details j^et without 
any efficient system, trusting to vastgrauts 
of money, to the work of the parish clergy, 
to her great schools like Eton and Rugby, 
to her renowned Universities, Oxford and 
Cambridge, to her special schools of art and 
industry, altogether producing under her 
civilization scholars renowned in every de- 

f)artment of science, in all the forms of 
iterature and statesmanship, but leaving 
her lowest classes in an ignorance suffi- 
ciently abject to come within the definition 
of barbarism — a vast volcano covered by a 
most insufficient and imperiled crust of 
middle class and aristocratic intelligence. 

But the consideration of the relation of 
the national government to public educa- 

\ 



tion has for the American, delicacies of in- 
volved and recriprocal responsibilities, and 
wide ditt'erences and opposites to all these, 
which they can only suggest by contrast. 
No American relation admits the one-man 
power. Here we have every-man power 
and the all-men power. For the checks and 
mutual balances of these, municipal and 
State organizations intervene in a beautiful 
harmony. The fact forbids, and the judg- 
ment will not admit, that the national 
government has no relation to public edu- 
cation. 

I. I remark first upon the fact of this 
relation. 

1. Historically, its growth from the ear- 
liest planting of the colonies presents a 
series of social and civil phenomena most 
attractive and instructive to the philan 
thropic philosopher. The differences in 
the treatment of education by the colonies 
were wide, and the results not less so. 
When, two centuries ago this very year, the 
English Commisioners for Foreign Plan- 
tations inquired of the colonial governors 
with regard to the condition of their re- 
spective settlements, the Governor of Vir- 
ginia replied : " I thank God there are no 
free schools or printing presses, and I hope 
we shall not have these hundred years," 
while the Governor of Connecticut an- 
swered: "One-fourth the annual revenue 
of the colony is laid out in maintaining free 
schools for the education of our children." 

Generally, the pre-eminence given the 
public good in all their political thoughts 
and civil organizations created a strong 
tendency towards the consideration of the 
training of the young. In those colonies, 
in which the whole body of men partici- 
pated in the framing of the laws, not only 
the interest in the individual welfare of 
the young quickened educational effort, 
but the equal laws they so much sought, 
and the very existence of the body politic, 
Avith all its freight of good for posterity, 
were seen to depend on the preservation of 
learning from burial in the graves of their 
fathers. Every child, as it was born into 
the world, was lifted from the earth by the 
genius of the colonies, and in their statutes 
received as its birth-right a pledge of the 
public care of its morals, and its mind. 



4 



All the colonies had more or less men of 
this spirit. Dr, Johnson of King's College, 
New York, in 1762, wrote to Archbishop 
Seeker, desiring that whenever grants for 
townships or villages were issued, a com- 
jjetent portion should be set apart for the 
support of religion and schools. Georgia 
in 1784 required that there should be laid 
out in each county twenty thousand acres 
of land of the first quality for the endow- 
ment of a collegiate seminary of learning. 

To the exertions of these men the country 
is indebted for leadership in the various 
steps, the correspondence and the consulta- 
tion which led to the Continental Congress, 
and the mighty events which followed, in 
the midst of which Congress enacted in 
1785 that there should " be reserved the lot 
No. 16 in every township for the mainte- 
nance of public schools." The ordinance 
of 1787, for the government of the territory 
north of the Ohio river, confirmed the pro- 
vision and declared that " Religion, mo- 
rality and knowledge being necessary to 
good government and the happiness of 
mankind, schools and means of education 
shall be forever encouraged." Further, lot 
No. 29 in each township was given for the 
purposes of religion in the case of the Ohio 
company and the Symmes purchase. Not 
more than two complete townships were 
to be given for the purposes of a Univer- 
sity. 

Here is that national action with regard 
to education that has shed its blessings upon 
every son and daughter born in this wide 
northwest. Here the historian will find 
the key to the marvels of material, social 
and civil development, the building of 
cities, the erection of States, the progress of 
civilization, no where else paralleled in hu- 
man annals. Hence have sprung school 
houses and universities, district, municipal 
and State systems of education, the pride 
of the rich and the honor of the poor, open- 
ing the arcana of learning to every child, 
however low, and inviting him to every 
attainment within the reach of man, and 
saying to the savans on the highest known 
summits of science and art (in the language 
of Webster to his companions in law.) 
"There is room higher up." How little 
the fathers comprehended the mighty 
growth which was to unfold from the acorn 
which they planted in this rich soil, its re- 
lations to liberty in this country and the 
world over, the measures and the men to 
come out of it for the preservation of the 
Union, for the leadership in harmonizing 
oriental and western civilizations, the un- 
named hosts swelling the armies of the new 
and higher civilization led by Powers in art, 
Mitchel in science, Burlingame in diplo- 
macy, Lincoln in the Emancipation of 
slaves. Grant, a new baptised Washington 
for military and civil affairs, Sherman, 
Sheridan, and a galaxy of " bright particu- 
lar stars," on whom mankind will never 
cease to gaze and bestow their tributes of 
admiration. 
To the early Colonial spirits, founders of 



this modern prosperity, are we indebted for 
the direction of thought, the Declaration 
of Independence, enforcing the great doc- 
trines with regard to the " inalienable right 
to life, liberty and the pursuit of happi- 
ness, for which governments are instituted 
among men, deriving their just powers 
from the consent of the governed." From, 
them and the work whichthey had directed, 
the Convention which framed the Consti- 
tution of the United States received its in- 
spiration, poised and concentrated in that 
immortal preamble, the truths of which 
must ever constitute the foundation and 
bulwark of human liberty: 

"We the people of the United 
States, in order to form a more perfect 
union, establish justice, insure do- 
mestic tranquillity, provide for the 
common defense, promote the general 
welfare and secure the blessings of 
liberty to ourselves and our pos- 
terity, do ordain and establish this 
Constitution for the United States 
OF America." 

What one word in the English language 
can so fully comprehend the assurance of 
all these objects—union, justice, tranquillity, 
defense, general welfare, the blessings of 
liberty to ourselves and posterity — as edu- 
cation ? 

We are not surprised in this convention 
to find that Mr. Charles Pinckney, of South 
Carolina, in May, 1787, and subsequently 
Mr. Madison, of Virginia, submitted pro- 
positions "to provide for the establishment 
of a National University at the seat of 
government, for the advancement of useful 
knowledge and the promotion of agricul- 
ture, commerce, trade and manufactures," 
which were finally lost expressly on the 
ground that such power was elsewhere in- 
cluded in the constitution. Indeed, a large 
body of the best men of the period, led by 
Washington, believed that the power to 
encourage education was authorized in the 
language — "to lay taxes and provide for 
the general welfare of the United States." 
No one who seeks to interpret correctly 
the relation of our National Government 
to public education can overlook the anxi- 
eties and expressions of Washington on the 
subject. The Continental Congress, a com- 
promise itself between great diflerences, he 
was called to the head of the army, a still 
further compromise. The members of that 
Congress were more frequently driven to 
their wit's ends by the diverse sentiments 
at home than by the warlike array of Eng- 
land. The twelve years school of the Con- 
federation gave them a lively sense of the 
necessity of " a more perfect union." But 
Washington, more than any and all these, 
had occasion in his capacity as General-in- 
Chief to see, feel and comprehend the in- 
herent diversities with which the National 
idea had to struggle. How keen his ap- 
preciation of the need of intercommunica- 
tion ! How well considered and strong the 
words with which he urges in his first 
message, and repeats so often, the necessity 



for facilitating the intercourse between 
distant parts of the country by a due at- 
tention to post-offices and post-roads ! He 
liad been in personal contact with the 
soldiers, the undisguised representatives of 
all classes in all the colonies; he knew, as 
no one else, what it had been to model 
them into one army or into several armies 
with a single purpose; the shadows of 
greater and more violent difficulties in the 
future rested upon his patriotic thoughts. 
In his last annual message he observed, 
"the institution of a military academy is 
recom'mended by cogent reasons, however 
pacific the general policy of the nation," 
But his great and cherished moulding in- 
strumentality was a national institution of 
learning. In his first message to Congress 
recommending any practical legislation he 
observed: "There is nothing more de- 
serving your patronage than the promotion 
of science and literature. Knowledge is in 
every country the surest basis of public 
happiness." In his last annual message 
he observes : "Among the motives to such 
an institution is the assimilation of prin- 
ciples, opinions and manners of our coun- 
trymen by the common education of a 
portion of our youth from every quarter : 
the more homogeneous our citizens can be 
made in these particulars, the greater will 
be our prosjject for permanent union." 

For a i^eriod many leading statesmen 
seconded his views. Unquestionably at 
that date a most powerful educational in- 
fluence came from the general government 
to the local communities. But no necessity 
forced other special legislation with regard 
to education than what has been mentioned. 
No office for its observation or aid was 
opened in the executive departments; and 
the men that came after soon "knew not 
Joseph," and forgot the essential i-elation 
to national security in which the fathers 
held education. Each State or community 
acted according to its local ideas. The free 
school, common to all, organized under the 
law of the State, supported by tax levied 
on the principle that " the property of the 
State should educate the children of the 
State," limited at first to a few in New 
England, gradually extended westward, 
and finally, in spite of the fatally hostile 
interests of African slavery, by the great 
popular favor it received, forced upon the 
■ statute book of every State, even the most 
southern, some sort of a public school 
system. Its absolute incompatibility with 
slavery forbade any legislation in reference 
to it in Congress while that institution was 
supreme. Whatever the educators thought, 
however fierce their struggle, however 
right any aid from the general government, 
they knew full well they must fail or suc- 
ceed in their own community, city or State. 
Even in the best State systems there 
were advances and retreats. But in the 
years after the fathers of the Republic 
l^assed away and the admonitions of their 
period were forgotten, a serious educational 
dearth fell upon the land, following more 



or less the indiflerence of the national 
statesmen. There ensued, however, a re- 
vival of education in localities, whose pre- 
monitory symptoms are seen in the letters 
and essays of Lindsley in Tennessee, John- 
son in Pennsylvania, and Gallaudet in Con- 
necticut, in 1825, and of Carter in Mas- 
sachusetts, in 1826, and in the legislative 
reports in Maryland and Kentucky in 1830; 
a revival finally strengthened and organized 
into a grand triumph by Mann, Russell, 
Everett, Brooks, Adams, Barnard, Webster, 
Sears, Boutwell, Stevens, Lewis, Andrews, 
Cowdery, Potter and Burrowes, kept up 
and repeated by the host who continue 
unto our day. 

How much these noble men thought of 
and desired aid from the general govern- 
ment for their own State endeavors, how^ 
much their minds labored with agony that 
the same educational advantages might be 
made uniyersal throughout the country, 
we can never know. We do know, how- 
ever, that some of them thought there 
should be an educational office in Wash- 
ington, and mooted its establishment, and 
secured the insertion of the educational 
inquiries into the census schedules of 1840, 
It is said to have been one of Mr. Mann's 
greatest disappointments during his term 
of Congressional service that he could not 
do what he wished to accomplish for na- 
tional educational action. 

In 1832, Congress, as if in sympathy with 
the revival of educational sentiment, passed 
an act giving, in connection with a division 
of the proceeds of l^nd sales, twelve and 
a half per cent, to certain States for educa- 
tional purposes, which was vetoed by 
Jackson. 

In 1837 Congress authorized the deposit 
with the different States, in proportion to 
their representation, of millions of the sur- 
plus in the treasury for safe keeping and 
repayment when required, the income of 
which, in a considerable number of the 
States, was set apart for school purj^oses. 

The Commissioner of the General Land 
Office and the Secretary of the Treasury 
having recommended larger land grants 
for school purposes, the acts admitting 
Oregon and Minnesota, etc., added to the 
16th the 36th section in each township for 
schools. 

In 1862 followed the grants for colleges 
of agriculture and the mechanic arts, 
making a total of land grants for common 
schools, universities, agricultural and me- 
chanical colleges of 78,576,794 acres ; or if 
the last grant is extended to the eleven 
territories when admitted as states, it will 
make, as Hon Joseph S. Wilson, the Com- 
missioner of the General Land Office, ob- 
serves, the princely endowment to the 
cause of education 'of 79,566,794 acres, or 
124,322 square miles — a larger surface than 
the united areas of England, Wales, Scot- 
land, Ireland and all the surrounding is- 
lands in the English seas ; or, if the amount 
thus donated be reckoned in money at $1.25 
per acre, it would equal $98,220,992.50 or an 



6 



appropriation from the national govern- 
ment on an average for every year of its 
existence of §1,044,904 for educational pur- 
poses. 

2. Another view under the fact of this 
relation of the national government to 
public education should not here escape 
us. It is directly connected with the late 
rebellion and its suppression. It is becom- 
ing so fashionable in certain quarters, when 
any allusion, good or evil, is made to those 
events, to cry out 

" Let the dead past burj' its dead," 

that the question arises whether there is 
not abroad a spirit which would bury in 
oblivion all memories of patriotic sacrifices, 
and plunge on into the darkness of the 
future, unmindful of past lessons, the in- 
viting subject of some other calamity, if 
possible more dire and admonitory. But 
whatever others may do, tlie educators of 
the rising generation must secure the full 
import of the catastrophe which has over- 
past carrying with it nine billions of 
treasure and a million of lives. 

How promptly as a class, though in the 
usages of nations exempt from military 
service as a profession, these patriotic 
teachers came forward, leaving their fields 
of usefulness at home to offer their superior 
skill to the service of their country, and, if 
need be, lay down their lives a sacrifice for 
its preservation, the memorials scattered 
through the wide land will never fail to 
tell. From their experience as a class they 
have reason to appreciate the struggle ; 
from the superior intelligence of their pro- 
fession they are under special obligations 
to understand it. It should not be forgot- 
ten here that the sentiments which strug- 
gled for the overthrow of the Union had 
been the subjects of misguided instruction, 
poisoning specially for a generation the 
channels of thought among the people of a 
large section of the country. On the other 
hand, the sentiments which sustained the 
Union existed, nay, were strong, clear and 
active, only to the extent that patriotic 
teachers and educational instrumentalities 
had made them so. Some one in 1861 fitly 
observed—" the plantation system and the 
school district system have come to a 
crisis." 

The intelligence, the character, the phil- 
anthropic and christian principles with re- 
gard to man, which they had inculcated, 
not only inspired the national army in its 
purely military efforts, but gave rise "among 
friends at home, and those in warlike 
array on the tented field, to those Christian 
charities, finding expression in ways un- 
numbered and undescribed, toward the 
disabled soldier and escaping slave, which 
cast a halo round the conflict with more in 
it of heaven than of earth. I can not 
pause here to even allude to the work of the 
Sanitary and Christian commissions, 
amounting in the aggregate to $20,000,000 
of expenditure. 

Christian endeavors at home and in the 



field were aroused, not only for the liberty 
of the slave and his protection from physical 
suflering, but the spirit which had made 
so prominent, in certain minds, from the 
earliest colonial date, the public welfare 
and the associated ideas of man's privileges, 
rights and equalities by nature, irrespective 
of all adventitious circumstances, moved 
the nobler hearts in the army and navy to 
labors for colored enlistment, industry, 
I observance of familj'' rights, property rights 
I and duties as citizens, and sent among them, 
willing and heroic teachers, often from -the 
best schools at home, resulting in dotting 
the Atlantic coast and the Mississippi 
Valley, within the regions of the rebellion, 
with a new civilization, holding in germ, 
under national defenses and by national 
powers the ideas and institutions which 
are to repossess and become universal 
throughout the area shadowed by slavery. 
Freedmen's organizations sprang up 
through the loyal sections and became 
active. In the language of the great War 
Minister, "the sentiment of the country 
adopted the ex-slaves as the nation's 
wards." 

The national mind, through the move- 
ments of the army, became specially cog- 
nizant also of another class, in the regions 
swept over by our forces, ignorant and 
terribly degraded, described South by 
various designations, but generally known 
as "poor whites." Many of them and 
others fleeing from the calamities of the 
war had received food, clothing, medical 
attention and shelter' from the national 
government. 

Vast tracts of land had also been aban- 
doned by the owners and naturally came 
under the national supervision. Congress, 
pervaded by the sentiment of the country 
respecting these two classes of persons, put 
the three great special facts together, and 
established in March, 1865, at the close of 
the war, the bureau of refugees, freedmen 
and abandoned lands. The christian hero, 
General O. O. Howard, was designated as 
its chief. His reports show a total expen- 
diture from January 1, 1865, to August 1, 
1869, of $11, 249, 028. 10. Much of this 
amount was of course expended for physical 
relief, l^ut the zealous and philanthropic 
chief of the bureau deeply felt that in the 
temporary relief provided by Government, 
it could not but be intended by the nation 
that there should be appropriate endeavors 
to prepare these people for all the amenities 
and responsibilities of citizenship. He 
therefore centralized the educational su- 
pervision which he found, continued and 
pushed forward the methods of educational 
aid in existence, till in 1869 he reports 
114,522 colored people under instruction. 
It will be observed that most of this eflTort 
has been directed to the improvement of 
the colored race, for obvious reasons. So 
great has been their avidity for knowledge 
that they have seized every opportunity for 
education, and General Howard is of the 
opinion that probably 250,000 colored adulta 



and children have received instruction 
during the year 1S69, Over thirty higher 
institutions of learning have been brouglit 
into existence through the aid of the bureau. 
The Greelt heroism of an indiflerent 
siege inspires Homer's immortal epic; 
some Roman scene, most limited in its field 
and actors, fills historic tomes, but what 
poet, what historian can ever truly rep- 
resent to future generations this vast, this 
special national work, the like of which 
was never before conceived either in pur- 
pose, conduct or results ? 

3. American theories grow rapidly. What 
we believe and desire we are apt to stretch 
the facts to meet. A section of the country, 
embracing a series of States and equaling 
an empire in territory, lately the seat of a 
war so vast and destructive of brotherly ties, 
of treasure and life, was to be restored to 
the exercises of all its privileges in the 
sisterhood of States. We believe they 
ought to be true to a government so abun- 
dant in its benefits, and desire their people 
to perform aright all the duties and enjoy 
all the immunities of American citizenship. 
Accordingly the country rejoices in the 
restoration of the local governments. In 
the progress of these events the nation has 
been impressed with certain leading facts 
and has met them according to its wisdom. 

It found Slavery furnishing the pretext 
and the sinews of the war for the national 
destruction, and declared the slaves free. 
It observed the spirit of the master still 
disposed to encroach on the new found lib- 
erty of the former slave, and fixed the 
decree of liberty in the Constitution by 
adding the thirteenth amendment, with 
full Congressional power to enforce it. 
Finding his citizenship resisted, the nation 
put its definition and assurance into the 
Constitution by adding the fourteenth 
amendment, and granted to Congress 
power to enforce it. Finding his enfran- 
chisement still resisted, that was defined 
and put into the Constitution, and power 
given to Congress for its defense, by adding 
the fifteenth amendment. 

4. We have observed some things that 
the nation had done directly to aid educa- 
tion before these great powers, ample to 
protect liberty from slavery, guard the 
citizenship of the humblest from encroach- 
ment, and secure the ballot in the hands of 
every man against peril, forever and every- 
where in the land, were gran ted to Congress. 
We have glanced a moment at the special 
efforts, made in connection with the war 
and its results, for education by the nation. 
But we should not pass from the considera- 
tion of this part of our subject before we 
have called to mind some things which the 
National Government has done incidentally 
in acknowledgment of its relation to public 
education, under the terms of the constitu- 
tion as they stood before these special 
grants of power to Congress. 

No government, since the theocracy, has 
ever more fully illustrated the great truth 
uttered by Guizot when he declared: " The 



first business of government is to discover 
what is just, reasonable and suitable to so- 
ciety ; when this is found, it is proclaimed ; 
the next business is to introduce it to the 
public mind." This indirect educational 
training of the entire people in the doctrines 
of its existence and procedure, has never 
been indifferently done. From the people 
of the people, by the people, it has never 
dared deny that all it does is for the people 
—not alone for their good, but that they 
may in due time know it, and that it is for 
the benefit of each and all that thev should 
know it all. 

A monarchical or imperial government 
publishes its decrees and the reports of its 
officers to a limited extent, for official, not 
for universal information; if others are to 
obtain them, they must be purchased at the 
market price. Our government, perhaps 
sometimes inadvertently and profligately 
(what nursing mother does not?) never- 
theless, we believe in the true spirit of a re- 
public, scatters its publications freely 
among all the people. Our ideas of economy 
are sometimes smitten by the vast expen- 
diture lor printing. But how better can 
the nation enlighten its citizens in their 
relations and duties, or illustrate before all 
the world the path of light it pursues? 

Moreover, if the government expects any 
vast interest to prosper, our statesmen have 
never doubted the propriety of promoting 
its growth. On this principle it opened 
roads through western wilds, built harbors 
on lake and ocean, improved rivers and 
aided transportation by rail and boat. It 
establishes an Agricultural Department to 
gather and distribute seeds, statistics and 
information at an annual cost of $175 000 
and publishes 225,000 copies of its annual 
report. On this ])rinciple, it makes original 
observations upon the stars, on the surface 
and structure of the earth, on ocean cur- 
rents, and the condition and changes of 
the atmosphere; itextends through years the 
survey of its coast, and publishes nautical 
information. It guards authors and in- 
ventors in their rights, for the encourage- 
ment of genius, and the general benefits 
thereby to be derived to literature, science 
and mankind. On this principle, it sends 
special commissioners to observe and re- 
port on the naval and military operations 
and improvements of other countries, sends 
military expeditions into its own wilds 
and naval expeditions to the Dead Sea' 
Japan, or round the world, at a cost of 
hundreds of thousands of treasure, and it 
votes aid to explorations of the Polar Sea 
Its practice is established and clear with 
regard to all these direct or incidental 
benefits to the public w^elfare. 

The national judgment not only affirms 
the rightness of these expenditures, but the 
national pride associates with them its 
progress and glory. They are all educa- 
tional, more or less directly. There can be 
no human progress from the beginning to 
the end of existence, individual or national, 
which is not educational. If the advance- 



8 



ment of all human interest centers in edu- 
cation, it is naturally inquired why every- 
thing else should receive direct national at- 
tention and encouragement, and education 
be excepted. 

Again, no one doubts the right of the 
Government to support the Naval Academy 
at Annapolis and the Military Academy at 
West Point, the one to train officers for the 
navy, and the other for the military service 
of the country. No one doubts the right of 
the government to detail these officers as 
instructors at the various institutions of 
learning, when called for to teach military 
science. In what way would this constitu- 
tional power be stretched if the national 
government should aid in training teachers 
for our schools— officers for the host of 
youth to become the future array of citizens? 

5. The minds of educators, full of these 
reflections, were inquiring why an interest 
so universal and so central, underlying and 
affecting every other interest, should not 
have some central instrumentality of 
benefit furnished it by the National Gov- 
ernment? This resulted in formal action 
by the National Association of School 
Superintendents, in February, 1866. Their 
able memorial, drawn by Hon. E.E. White, 
asking for the collection and dissemination 
of educational statistics and information, 
was presented to Congress, and resulted in 
the passage of an act to establish a Depart- 
ment of Education, which was approved 
March 2, 1867. Hon. Henry Barnard was 
appointed commissioner, and immediately 
entered on his duties. During the first two 
years he was paid a salary of $4,000 per 
annum, and was allowed three clerks, at 
yearly salaries of $2,000, $1,800, and $1,600 
respectively. In the third year he was 
paid a salary of $3,000, and was allowed 
$600 as a contingent fund, and two clerks 
at salaries of $1,200 each. Various circulars 
containing inquiries and information were 
issued, and one report to the number of 
seventeen hundred copies published. 

Every embarrassment beset the Bureau. 
Its force was not only limited, but its 
quarters inadequate. From the first, in- 
formation began to be gathered by the 
Commissioner with the greatest pains, 
which would have been invaluable to edu- 
cators, to science, and especially to the in- 
dustrial arts; but its publication was not 
accomplished. The friends of education 
have been unable to see why this Bureau 
should not be treated in legislation as the 
interests committed to it demand. 

II. I remark some things that the Na- 
tional Government may not do in its re- 
lation to public education. Thus far we 
have noticed only the fact of this relation 
as it has been recognized and acted upon 
under the constitutional powers given 
Congress, before the recent great grants of 
power to protect the liberty, the citizenship, 
and the right to vote of every male citizen 
in the country. The theory of our govern- 
ment has proceeded on the supposition that 



no protection is like that assured by uni- 
versal education in intelligence and virtue. 
The occasions which have rendered 
necessary barriers so strong as the new con- 
stitutional bulwarks against the reflow of 
the waves of evil must be great, and clearly 
impose a struggle of no small moment upon 
those who are in those communities to 
sustain faithfully their sentiment and 
action to the National Government. Their 
demand for educational aid, and elsewhere 
the conviction of its necessity, are uniting 
under the new grants of power to Congress 
to demand further national action. 

1. I mention, therefore, first under this 
head, that the national Government can 
and should seek to do nothing in violation 
of constitutional law. When we recall the 
educational sentiments of Jeflex'son ; when 
we remember that Littleton Dennis Teackle, 
in Maryland, in 1828, as chairman of a 
committee in the Legislature, declared in 
his report that " a good system of primary 
schools as the nursery of youth is the uni- 
versal and effectual means of diffusing 
knowledge, of promoting industry, and of 
dispensing freely the various benefits of 
social order and human happiness," affirm- 
ing that "those persons opposed to their 
extension must be unfriendly to our form 
of government," and exclaiming, "would 
it be well to permit the great body of our 
people to remain illiterate and debased, the 
proper subjects of wily intrigue and vault- 
ing ambition? — for all must know that 
ignorance is the bane of liberty and treason 
is its' natural offspring;" when we find the 
report of Morehead, chairman of a cor- 
responding committee in Kentucky, hold- 
ing the following language, " but pecuniaiy 
advantages are but paltry and groveling 
considerations when compared with the 
moral and intellectual improvement that 
would follow in the train of a well digested 
system of common education ; there is no 
check upon the aristocracy of wealth so 
effectual as the equality of knowledge— a 
people well educated will never be the 
slaves of tyrants or the tools of demagogues; 
those who have aimed to subvert the 
liberties or abuse the confidence of a free 
people have approached them through their 
ignorance ;" when we remember how many 
other patriotic men in the South held and 
eloquently uttered similar sentiments, and 
call to mind the night of slavery and blood 
in which we have seen them go down, and 
feel that if they and their sentiments had 
succeeded, the late war and its calamities 
would never have come upon us, we cannot 
wonder at the solicitude awakened thi'ough- 
out the land on the contemplation of cor- 
responding efforts now being put forth in 
the lately disturbed States, at fearful odds 
and disadvantages, for the establishment of 
free systems of universal education; nor 
can we wonder that this solicitude looks in 
all directions, and especially to the general 
government for aid in their behalf. Sharing 
and confirming this anxiety, I nevertheless 
find and expect to find in the constitution, 



and only there, the autliority for whatever 
may be attemi^ted, and would apply every 
constitutional restriction. In this instru- 
ment are laid the foundations of our 
liberties and from it must come their pro- 
tection. 

2. I observe again, under this head, that 
nothing should be done calculated to de- 
crease local or individual etlbrt for educa- 
tion. It is 0/ the individual and by the 
individual, but it is/or all men. Whatever 
comes to any one's education from his re- 
lations to others, must after all be determined 
by what he does. The first formal relation 
outside of the child is the family. A still 
larger relation is represented by the Church, 
the School, or the State. The individuality 
of each of these is pre-eminently American, 
and is deeply rooted in the National Con- 
stitution. 

The separation of Church and State and 
the freedom of conscience, have given a 
freedom of play and of growth to these 
forces nowhei'e else accorded. The heavenly 
bodies have no more need to observe the 
law of gravitation, than these have to re- 
gard all constitutional guarantees. Our 
literature describes with pride their pro- 
gress ; our books, nay, our sculptures and 
paintings, are not American unless the em- 
bodiment of this individualism. Its special 
beauty is seen in the fact that it does not 
result in the disintegration charged by its 
enemies, but reveals the possibility of a 
harmony excelled only by that "of the 
spheres." 

Education has already accomplished 
wonders, in sections. Rising in New Eng- 
land, it has disseminated itself westward, 
and we believe would everywhere to the 
limits of our territory had it not been for the 
fatal liostility of slavery. One of the 
earliest colonial declarations, indicates a 
correct conception of a graded system of 
schools for the State, (which the race will 
never outgrow,) providing elementary, 
secondary, and fiuperior instruction at the 
expense of its citizens. There are few 
questions connected with education which 
have not received their highest solution and 
illustration in some one or more of our 
towns, cities or States, under the relation 
of the national government to education as 
it has been seen in the past; here the train- 
ing of teachers, there country schools, here 
graded schools, elsewhere compulsory at- 
tendance, inspection and supervision, the 
perfection of educational architecture for 
the school of the country, the city or of arts, 
or for the college and university, or for 
some one or more of the features of internal 
management, discipline, instruction, illus- 
tration, labor and recreation, in the various 
grades of training. There should be no 
national action diminishing or checking 
any local progress in any of these excel- 
lencies; the perfection of each is the nation's 
highest interest for its locality. Yet no one 
would suggest that these are without rela- 
tions to the national government alike of sen- 
timent and action. I have somewhere seen it 



observed that "the great botanist, Linnseus, 
thought of constructing a tloral clock by a 
special arrangement of diflerent sorts of 
flowers. It would not be so difticult a 
matter as niight be supposed. The morn- 
ing glory opens at dawn, the star of Beth- 
lehem at ten o'clock, the ice-plant at noon, 
the four-o'clock at that hour in the after- 
noon the evening j^rimrose.at sunset, and 
the night flowering cereus after dark. The 
beautiful white water-lily closes its i:»etals 
at sunset, and sinks beneath the surface of 
the lake or river for the night. At dawn 
the petals expand and the flower emerges 
again from its watery bed." 

This beautiful conception of an arrange- 
ment by the botanist, bringing together for 
the eye of man one of the beauties ever 
present to the Divine observation, would be 
utterly frustrated by any harm which 
should interfere with the natural vigor of 
either plant, and throw it out of its period 
of bloom. However national action may 
benefit the educational endeavors of the 
town, city or state, its own object is defeated 
the moment harm is brought to the local 
vigor, wisdom, or results. National action, 
may fitly stimulate the whole to a higher 
emulation, and seek that the excellencies of 
one may be attained by all. 

3. Again, the national government in its 
relation to public education may not suffer 
either the local or general prevalence of 
ignorance, that shall result in the destruc- 
tion of the principles of liberty by the cen- 
tralization of power. It is incompatible 
with the genius of our government to 
tolerate other than Indian barbarism with- 
in its limits. If, in any part, disorder 
reigns, a remedy must be found ; there can 
be no greater cause for the development of 
such a condition of things than ignorance. 
"Writers of every age have used the 
strongest terms at their command to char- 
acterize it. Adam Smith likened ignorance, 
spread through the lower classes and 
neglected by the state, to a leprosy, and 
says "where the duty of education is neg- 
lected the state is in danger of falling into 
terrible disorder." His declaration was 
speedily illustrated by the English riots of 
1780. Macaulay thus describes the scenes; 

" Without any shadow of a grievance, at 
the summons of a madman, one hundred 
thousand rising in insurrection — a week of 
anarchy — Parliament besieged — * * * * 
the lords pulled out of their coaches — the 
bishops flying over the tiles — thirty-six 
fires blazing at once in London — the house 
of the Chief Justice sacked — the children 
of the Prime JMinister taken out of their 
beds in their night clothes, and laid on the 
table of the horse-guards — and all this the 
effect of nothing but the gross, brutish 
ignorance of the people, who had been left 
brutes in the midst of Christianity, savages 
in the midst of civilization." But we need 
not go abroad for such scenes of horror and 
their lessons. We have seen the police of 
the city and the authority of the State 
powerless before the mob, during the anti- 



10 



negro riots in New York, Memphis, and 
New Orleans, and peace and security en- 
forced only by the presence of national 
bayonets. 

Should anywhere a local majority, as we 
can conceive it may, become hostile to law 
and disregard its demands, we readily un- 
derstand the effect upon those in any such 
community who . obey and support law ; 
they are in antagonism to the lawless ; their 
property and lives are at the mercy of the 
passions of the madmen around them ; in- 
cendiary fires consume their dwellings, 
thieves steal their herds, marauders gather 
their crops, and submission is the only and 
at best but an uncertain chance of escaping 
the assassin's knife or bullet, or the halter 
of the midnight band. All local law 
trampled under foot, where can they, where 
will they look but to the central govern- 
ment? The more this condition is extended, 
the greater the call for the enforcement of 
the nation's laws or the exercise of its 
military force. The rule of law must pre- 
vail ; if it does not by local sentiment, both 
local and general interest will demand 
national action. Centralization is less 
likely to occur in a republic by the assump- 
tion of authority by the ambitious, than to 
be produced by a condition of civil evils 
which suggest it as a cure. Dr. Draper af- 
firms that the empire was produced out of 
the Roman republic less by the ambition 
of the emperors, than by the evils from 
which the empire was supposed to be a re- 
lief. We have seen some of our own States, 
starting a new government less compact 
than our own, its foundation even laid in 
the doctrine of secession, soon here and 
there suggesting a willingness to escape the 
disasters into which it had plunged them 
by becoming a monarchy. Our statesmen 
should be too observant of these dangers to 
allow them to overtake us. They must 
foresee the evil for us, and enable us to 
avoid it. The citizen owes allegiance to 
the national government; and the nation, 
if local lawlessness imperils his i^roperty 
and life, must i^rotect him. 

Take away education, and what means 
remain? As Macaulay observes: "Military 
force, prisons, solitary cells, penal colonies, 
gibbet^ — all the other apparatus of i^enal 
laws. If, then, there be an end to which 
government is bound to attain — if there are 
only two ways of attaining it — if one of 
those ways is by elevating the moral and 
intellectual character of the people, and if 
the other way is by inflicting pain, who 
can doubt which way every government 
ought to take ?" 

Shall the land where the banners which 
lead civilization are unfurled, admit the 
doctrine that the nation may demand all 
things of its citizen — his service as a juror, 
as soldier — nay, the sacrifice of his property 
and life, fealty to the last in everything, 
and cannot in its very nature aid his pre- 
paration for the discharge of these responsi- 
bilities ? Shall we mock reason with the 
absurdity that the nation may do every 



thing else for him, but must let him rushf 
into barbarism rather than give a thought 
to his education? There can be no fact 
growing out of our institutions, nothing 
but an illusion, a prejudice, some false de- 
duction like that of secession, thus to lead 
us astray. Rather let those delicate and fit 
duties be done by the national government 
which assure the universality of intelli- 
gence and virtue. 

The more people regard each other's 
interests spontaneously by choice, the less 
government, either local or general, is re- 
quired to display its power. In proportion 
as the different parts of the country are 
enlightened, each town, city, county, or 
state will, of itself, within its own limits, 
assure every citizen freedom and security 
in the pursuit of happiness. It is the local 
observance and enforcement of the law 
which constitutes one of the chief excel- 
lencies of our institutions. 

Ours is pre-eminently a government of 
reason and right. Adopting the language 
of Guizot, "suppose now that the truth 
which ought to decide upon the affair,, 
being found and proclaimed, all under- 
standings should be at once convinced, all 
wills at once determined, that all should ac- 
knowledge that the Government w^as right, 
and obey it spontaneously. There is no- 
thing yet of compulsion, no occasion for 
the employment of force. Does it follow, 
then, that a Government does not exist? 
Is there nothing of government in all this? 
To be sure there is, and it has accomplished 
its task." 

III. I next mention some things Avhich 
the National Government ')naij do in this 
relation. 

1. It may do all things required for edu- 
cation in the territories. 2. It may do all 
things required for education in the District, 
of Columbia. 3. It may also do all things 
required by its treaties with and its obliga- 
tions to the Indians. 

1. How manifold and full of consequences 
the duties here included! Every territory 
is a future state in embryo, in its territorial 
form completely under the moulding power 
of the government, soon it will pass to self- 
direction as a State and assume its appro- 
priate equality in the increasing sisterhood. 
Then the citizens must be left with only 
the indirect moral or incidental aid of the 
nation to work out their school system for 
themselves. Now the nation may give 
them for a beginning the best result of the 
models of the land, inculcating correct ideas 
of free education; as broad and comprehen- 
sive, placing at the head of all secular 
interests the care and nurture of the young; 
as impartial, requiring the education of 
both sons and daughters, giving the latter 
every fit advantage provided for the former; 
as universal, embracing all children high 
and low, rich and poor, black and white ; 
as thorough, adapted to the development of 
every faculty in the finest symmetry. How 



11 



differently has the nation discliarged its 
territorial obligations, 

2. Next, as regards the District of Co- 
lumbia. Here, especially in the city of 
Washington, there should be a model system 
of elementary and secondary training for 
theresidentyouth, complete in its buildings, 
grounds, apparatus, and in its opportunities 
for research in literature, science, and art. 
Where else than at the seat of government 
could there more fitly be the crowning 
university of the land, where every youth 
could freely pursue any branch of study or 
experiment desired? The Republic of 
Switzerland has already set us the example 
in its Federal University and Polytechnic 
School of Zurich. 

Thus would be realized the ideal dream 
of the father of his country. Alas ! what a 
contrast with the facts ! How reluctantly, 
nay, how imperfectly, the general govern- 
ment has provided common sch'ools for the 
children of the District ! The system strug- 
gles on under four different boards — one 
for the white schools of Washington, an- 
other for those of Georgetown, the third for 
those of the rest of the district, and another 
for the colored schools of the whole district; 
in spite of the excellence of some of the 
school buildings, others in use are utterly 
unfit for the assembly of children ; no pro- 
vision has yet been made for the training 
of teachers, and no exact or thoroughly ar- 
ranged method for development by grades 
into higher school instruction ; and nearly 
one-half of the children of school age are 
growing up unbenefited by the system of 
public instruction, 

3. Since 1810 appropriations have been 
made for educational purposes among the 
Indians; and if I may use the statement of 
a careful accountant who has examined the 
subject, $6,000,000 have siwe that date been 
set apart with this object, the average an- 
nual appropriations being at present not far 
from $lij,000. 

Beyond what has been accomplished by 
Christian missionaries, what have we to 
show? Alas! if not "wars and rumors of 
wars," we have their going back, as in the 
case of the village Indians of New Mexico, 
into a greater barbarism. These Indians, 
by their manner of life, offering a specially 
favorable opportunity for schools, a con- 
siderable number of them, when we received 
their territory, being able to read Spanish 
through the system of instruction adopted 
for them by Charles the Fifth, are now 
almost totally illiterate under the neglect 
of the general government. But it is not 
merely the neglect nor the amount of 
money expended that should come into 
this view. Appropriate attention, a right 
expenditure of the money from the first, 
would have transferred annually a number 
of Indians over the line between barbarism 
and civilization, advanced their people in 
capacity for the duties of American citizens, 
saved the national character from the stain 
brought on it by its Indian policy, and the 



Treasury of the United States from untold 
millions of expenditure for Indian wars. 

Ladies and gentlemen, have you ever 
counted the children under these several 
heads — territorial, district and Indian— for 
whose training the national government is 
directly responsible by the terms of the 
constitution? A careful computation, based 
on the census of 1860 places the number of 
school age, not including those in Alaska, 
at 226,800, or about a quarter of a million — 
more than the combined school population, 
as given by the same authority, in the states 
of South Carolina, Oregon, lihode Island, 
Florida and Delaware. If out of the 
81,918 wild Indian children of school age 
included in the above estimate, any con- 
siderable number had received the benefit 
of the annual appropriations for education, 
there might now be on the borders none of 
the barbaric horrors conveyed by the words, 
an "Indian War," 

My friends, with what apology can we 
go to the future generations for this neglect? 
It is useless to say that they are savages and 
worthy only of destruction, while for 
pagans and savages the world is aglow with 
missions. 

4. The national government may also do 
all that its international relations require 
in regard to education. 

Probably a Diogenes could not find a 
citizen of this country who does not believe 
in the American mission. Fair Columbia 
is not for herself alone, but was sent for the 
benefit of others. We have seen that edu- 
cation, directly or indirectly, is one of the 
first functions of government with respect 
to its own citizens. Bising his abstract 
ideiis of government on reason and con- 
science, the American naturally applies 
the principle to all nations, and acts ac- 
cordingly. Our fathers, "out of a decent 
respect to the opinion of mankind, declared 
the causes which impelled them to the se- 
paration ;" our statesmen have ever sought 
to infuse into international law princiiales 
of rectitude ; the growth of the nation, and 
especially its triumphant deliverance from 
its recent perils, have steadily advanced it 
toward pre-eminence among nations. The 
leading statesmen of the most advanced 
powers of Europe, as Dr. Hoyt observes, 
have come to accept it as a settled maxim 
of government that the enlightenment of 
the people and national prosperity are not 
accidentally coincident, but necessarily so, 
sustaining to each other the relation of 
cause and effect. They therefore seek the 
key to the secret of American progress in 
our methods of training youth. England, 
France, Germany send out their commis-' 
sioners to examine and report. How long 
shall it be true, as recently affirmed on the 
floor of Congress by the Hon. G. F. Hoar, 
" that the only respectable accounts of pub- 
lic instruction in this country have been 
prepared by foi-eign governments?" Cer- 
tainly, whatever excellence is attained in 
our system of education no American 
would withhol(T from any quarter of the 



12 



globe. How can the Yankee nation pre- 
serve its character for universality without 
doing and being prepared to do all that may 
be fit to disseminate knowledge of what- 
ever is excellent in the culture of any of its 
people? To respond to every call, whether 
it comes as recently from Hungary, with 
Tegard to our city schools, or from France, 
with regard to teaching of drawing and 
design, or from England, with regard to mili- 
tary training, or from the remote colonies of 
Victoria and South Australia, or from the 
teachers of the Netherlands seeking Ameri- 
can educational statistics and information ? 
No foreign nation is satisfied to conduct 
its educational system without a know- 
ledge of the improvements made in our 
country. An Italian minister is known to 
have lamented, when desiring to organize 
a vast system of instruction in his country, 
that he had not the American documents 
on hand. Sarmiento, the philosopher and 
philanthropist, who more than any other 
gives promise of being the regenerator of 
the Argentine Republic, declared in a letter 
to Mr. Sumner—" If the United States owe 
an account to the human race of their ex- 
perience and progress in certain respects, 
which are important to the well being and 
improvement of mankind, just as they re- 
ceived from England and from human 
thought many of the principal benefits of 
government, a means of transmitting know- 
ledge would hereby have been established, 
and the National Department of Education 
would have fulfilled that useful function 
beside the special object for which it was 
created." So high is his opinion of the 
educational responsibility of the United 
States that he declares it would have come 
to be, as it were, " the department of inter- 
national and foreign educational relations;" 
its reports and data would, when collected, 
have been a fountain of information not 
only ^to the South American States, but 
other nations ; for even if a report of Mas- 
sachusetts or New York schools can be ob- 
tained in Europe, such documents, by their 
purely provincial character, are wanting in 
the authority which the seal of the United 
States would give to those of a national 
department. 

Does not the nation, moreover, owe it, not 
only to the children but to their teachers, 
that no improvement should be made in 
any quarter of the globe without the full 
benefits of it being secured for them? 
What valuable information and powerful 
impulses have been brought to us from 
educational efforts in Europe? What other 
instrumentality can so fitly as the nation 
secure these, communicate and scatter 
them abroad ? 

These international comparisons are re- 
cently strikingly illustrating their advan- 
tages. One of the French commissioners 
at the London international Exhibition of 
1862, reported to Napoleon, that apprehen- 
sions were excited lest France should be 
outrivaled in the rapidity of her industrial 
progress, and recommended'*special schools 



for instruction in the arts. On the other 
hand (and maj' we not say as a result of 
this French observation?) at a conference 
on technical education in January, 1868, a 
manufacturer from Birmingham was able 
to present a list of sixty or seventy articles, 
many of the highest importance, made in 
that city and the hardware district, which 
had been within a few years replaced in 
the markets of the world by the products 
of other countries. Hither, especially if 
we would preserve the freedom of our in- 
dustries, must the nation turn its attention, 
so that at every center of sufficient popula- 
tion there may be an adequacy of instruc- 
tion in the mechanic arts, to give the in- 
ventive and industrial genius and hand of 
the country every needful aid that can be 
obtained from what is accomplished abroad. 
As Mr. Hoar observes in the able speech 
already quoted, "upon this ground surely 
the protectionist and the free trader can 
unite ; no American statesman will be un- 
willing to give to the American workman 
the advantage in the great industrial com- 
petition of mankind, which results from 
superiority of knowledge." There is a cer- 
tain national pride in the extent to which 
our country in the recent war has in many 
l^articulars outstripped the i^owers of the 
earth in the equipment and management 
of armies and navies. But the mission of 
the United States is one of peace, rather 
than war. She assumes to lead the nations 
of the earth toward an age in which reason 
and conscience are to be supreme. 

5. The national government may call all 
persons or States to account for whatever 
has been intrusted to them by it for educa- 
tional iDurposes. This is only the declara- 
tion of the principle founded in nature and 
embodied in our national compact. A very 
considerable portion of the permanent 
school fund of the country, and in some 
instances the total amount, has been re- 
ceived from the United States, either in 
land grants or the surplus distributed from, 
the treasury. In several of the Southern 
States, one of the first indications of their 
separation from the responsibilities of the 
Union was the waste of these funds for war 
purposes. Indeed, af the last session of 
Congress facts that were becoming known 
with regard to the Agricultural College 
land grants, were prompting the committee 
on education and labor unanimously to 
seek a remedy of the evils, even though it 
should be thi'ough an absolute revocation 
of the grants. No one familiar with the 
incitements to human accountability can 
doubt, that had the national government, 
from the first donation of aid, simply re- 
quired a report of the management of all 
grants, bestowed and deposits made, there 
would have been much better use made of 
them and vastly greater benefits accrued to 
her youth and citizens. 

6. The national government may use 
either the public domain or the money re- 
ceived from its sale for t he benefit of edu- 
cation. 



13 



Senator Willey, of West Virginia, intro- 
duced a bill for tliis purpose during the 
last session of Congress, and in his speech 
in its support observed, that "it had been 
ascertained that the net balance from the 
land sales for the year ending June 30, 
1869, was $3,919,070, which divided among 
the States according to the provisions of 
his bill would give to each congressional 
district the sum of about §10,000." 

SupiDose either the lands or the money 
from their sale be given with a condition 
that some specified amount be raised by 
local (city, county or state) taxation, and 
that the schools be conducted in ac- 
cordance with approved principles of or- 
ganization, maintained by the people and 
directed by ofRcers of their choosing; 
what a stiaiulus would be communicated 
throughout the whole country to educa- 
tional endeavor? Great as is the direct ad- 
vantage from the $90,000 annually distri- 
buted from the Peabody fund, far greater 
good will result from the conditions on 
which it is distributed by the trustees 
through Dr. Sears, that wise and skillful 
educator. 

7. The National Government may know 
all about education in the country, and may 
communicate of what it knows at the dis- 
cretion of Congress and the Executive. 
This is done to a certain extent in the cen- 
sus, and has become one of its most im- 
portant features, and I may mention that 
the country is fully warranted in expecting 
from the present census, under the super- 
vision of General Walker, directed by 
Secretary Cox, more than has ever before 
been secured. It cannot be admitted, how- 
ever, that this decennial and limited effort 
is sufficient in respect to an interest so vital 
to every other. The nation expends hun- 
dreds of thousands of dollars for its own 
protection, in its ministerial and consular 
policy, chiefly to keep itself posted on the 
friendly or "unfriendly attitude of other 
powers ; but no foreign relation can be of 
such consequence to it as the condition of 
its own citizens, in regard to intelligence 
or ignorance. No foreign facts can be of 
such importance to it, as the fact that the 
number of male illiterates over twenty 
years old, (may we not say voters?) in the 
thirty-three States of the Union (not in- 
cluding Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada, and 
Oregon,) according to the census of 1860, 
was of whites, 612,721 ; of colored, 921,624 ; 
or a total of 1,534,325 voters unable to read 
and write; showing the majority in the last 
general election being 309,722, that the bal- 
ance of power was in the hands of less than 
one-fifth of the illiterate voters of the 
country, if they had combined for its con- 
trol. Can anyone count this array of po- 
litical power and feel any too well assured 
of the future destiny of the republic? 
Indeed, the illiterate voters in seventeen of 
the respective States, according to the same 
census, already outnumber the majorities 
in those States in the last general election ; 
nor can all this be charged to the South, or 



the Fifteenth Amendment, for Ohio had. 
26,292; Pennsylvania, 31,453; and New 
York, 50,356 white voters who could not 
read and write. 

8. The National Government may make 
laws for these several purposes, and the 
Federal Courts may adjudicate questions 
under them. 

9. In accordance with these laws, plainly 
the Government should provide a national 
educational office and an officer, and furnish 
him clerks, and all means for the fulfilment 
of the national educational obligations. 

10. The government may take, as has 
been established, by legislative and execu- 
tive action, and by the decision of the 
courts, such exceptional action as excep- 
tional circumstances may require, (a), for 
the public welfare, (6), for the assurance of 
a Republican form of government, (c), for 
the protection of the liberty of those lately 
slaves, (d), for the security of their citizen- 
ship, (e), for the free exercise of the right to 
vote, (/), for the equality of all men before 
the law, and { g)^ for the fitting of any citi- 
zen for any responsibility the nation may 
impose on him. 

IV. Finally, I mention some of the 
benefits of the general government's doing 
fully all that its relation to public education 
requires. 

However derelict with respect to educa- 
tion the people of any section may have 
been, we may affirm with assurance, that 
their action would have been less so, had 
the educational sentiments of Washington, 
and his compeers prevailed in the National 
Councils. Whatever censure we bestow on 
any state, for the ignorance of its people, 
the National Government must share it. 

1. When we find, using the census of 1860 
and the recent reports of postal and revenue 
receipts, that on an average, every indi- 
vidual of the population in New England, 
paid in 1869, 84 7-10 cents for his use of the 
postal service, and that each individual in. 
the six coast-planting States, from South 
Carolina to Louisiana, inclusive, paid on an 
average only 19 cents for his use of the 
l^ostal service, and that if the intelligence 
of all the sections of the country were 
brought up to its measure in New England, 
there would not only be no annual deficit, 
as now, of $5,000,000.00 in the postal receipts, 
but a surplus of $7,000,000.00, thus allowing 
the Department to be self-supporting, and 
to reduce letter postage to two cents, when 
we further find that the individuals of these 
same states (classed by sixes) put their 
hands in their pockets to make up this, 
among other annual deficits, as seen in the 
internal revenue receij^ts, every individual 
in New England on the average paying 
$4.02, and every one in the coast-planting 
states only 90 8-10 cents into the treasury, 
we are in'doubt whether to blame most the 
sections in ignorance, or the apathy of the 
intelligent sections, or the neglect of the 
general government, that chooses rather to 
tolerate this inequaUty of burdens, than to 



u 



take any adequate or appropriate means 
for the dissemination of intelligence. 

2. The nation fulfilling its duties in this 
relation, education will no longer be ex- 
cluded from the topics of congressional dis- 
cussion. Already the sentiments of the 
fathers have repeated thenieelves in the ex- 
tended speeches of Messrs. Garfield, Prosser, 
and Hoar, and the briefer declarations of 
numerous Senators and members, whenever 
the question has arisen. President Grant, 
in connection with the adoption of the 
Fifteenth Amendment, fitly, in the spirit 
of Washington, recommends the doing of 
all that may be appropriately done to pre- 
pare these new citizens for the competent 
and faithful discharge of their new duties. 
No longer will the subject be beneath the 
attention of statesmen. Well do I remem- 
ber the shock my mind received when first 
struck by the idea that our public men 
actually outgrew a knowledge of and 
interest in school affairs. 

Making some inquiries on important 
questions of school management, I souglit 
to bring to bear upon tlie conclusions I 
might reach the opinions of several states- 
men whom I most honored, among whom 
to none had I given a higher place than to 
Mr. Seward. But " My countrymen, what 
a fall was there " in my expectations, when 
the cool reply came back in substance that 
he had so much to do with public affairs 
that he knew nothing about questions of 
school management. There would be, 
under the change under discussion, a suffi- 
cient motive for their seeking acquaintance 
with so important a subject. Education 
would no longer be excluded from the 
topics on which Congress publishes docu- 
ments for the information and benefit of 
the people. It would no longer be true, as 
of the last session, that for the publication 
of the report of storms, $15,000, of wind and 
current charts, $12,000, and of the Nautical 
Almanac, $26,500 were voted, and not a cent 
for educational publications ; nor that, as in 
1866, $50,000 for the publication of the medi- 
cal and surgical history of the rebellion, 
for the benefit of the lucrative profession 
of Medicine, numbering, by the census of 
1860, 54,193 members, when not a cent was 
voted for any publication for the benefit of 
the impecunious profession of teaching, 
numbering, according to the same authority, 
150,251. A just judgment, we believe, will 
affirm that these things ought to be done, 
and the others ought not to have been left 
undone. 

3. The effect of intelligence and culture 
upon the national welfare, its peace, its en- 
terprise, and its production of wealth, will 
be more readily seen and acknowledged. 
Not only Labor, but Capital, finding that 
the ability to read and write, adds, as as- 
certained by the inquiries of Mr. Mann, at 
least twenty-five per cent., on the average, 
to the productive capacity of the manual 
laborer, will everywhere be enlisted in 
favor of education. An annual national re- 
I)ort upon education in the country, show- 



ing the relative rank, and respective ac- 
complishments of different States, cities, 
colleges, and universities, would apply to 
the action of all the stimulus of a noble, 
and generous emulation. Follies would be 
pointed out, errors corrected, more just 
standards of comparison established. 

Many communities are indifferent about 
their own schools, simply because they do 
not know what others are doing. If history 
brings back the past, and adds to our ex- 
istence, the lives of our fathers, raising and 
extending our perceptions, and our know- 
ledge of them, and bettering our compre- 
hension of ourselves, giving us a more clear 
and natural perception of our education and 
destiny, an acquaintance with what is re- 
mote in place, but present in time, pro- 
duces, in a measure, the same effect, with 
the additional impression that it comes from 
the living, instead of the dead. A national 
report would thus put in the hands of every 
educator, not only a comparison of his own 
system with that of others immediately 
about him, but the excellencies and defects 
that are most marked, in the labors of all 
the educators of America, strengthened by 
facts and comparisons, drawn from other 
portions of the world. The struggling edu- 
cators of the south, would be furnished 
with the facts, precedents, experiments, 
and arguments needed for the success of 
their unequal conflict. Any improvement 
effected in any district, town, city or State, 
would be put within the reach of every 
other. 

Indeed, the national recognition of edu- 
cation should shed a corresponding benefit 
on all its instrumentalities, the teacher, the 
school officer, and all the efforts made for 
improvement in organization, management, 
houses, apparatus, books, discipline, and 
instruction. Dr. Barnard believes that the 
single work issued by him, on school-ar- 
chitecture, has saved the waste of millions 
of money, and contributed to an extent, 
never to be determined, to the comfort and 
health of thousands of pupils. 

A new motive, a new consideration would 
be added to educational thought, another 
inspiration, and a new door opened to en- 
deavor. Nor are any without the need of 
these. "Now," said Nelson, when clear- 
ing for action, " now for a peerage or West- 
minster Abbey." "I have no illusions 
left," said Sidney Smith, " but the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury." Said Burke, "the 
Lawyers are only birds of passage in the 
House of Commons," and then added with 
a change of figure, " they have their best 
bower anchor in the House of Lords." 

But specially, and comprehensively, its 
benefits would reach all the youth in the 
country. We cannot settle for them, the 
question of their day, or bear their respon- 
sibilities; but we can assure their education; 
we would not take them out of the world ; 
but we can help to prepare them to live in 
it. The clear-sighted and far-seeing edu- 
cator, justly looking at the defects in the 
best city and State systems, giving amplest 



15 



■credit for all excellencies, yet perceiving 
the need acknowledged by the educators of 
Massachusetts for progress there, and the 
failure in New York, and nearly all our 
large cities, to reach the tens of thousands 
of degraded youth, marks everywhere the 
resistance offered by ignorance, self-interest, 
vice, and crime, to the enlightenment and 
culture of the people, and knows that the 
battle has to be renewed, in a measure, for 
every generation. He finds Delaware with- 
out State school supervision, leaving all 
educational questions to the counties, and 
having no provision for the blacks ; Mary- 
land, though recently revising her laws, 
educating colored children only in Balti- 
more : Virginia but just putting a free 
school law on her statute book; West Vir- 
ginia upon the point of striking from her 
system its right arm, county supervision; 
Kentucky just enacting a new school law, 
but giving no opportunity for colored youth; 
Tennessee, after establishing free schools, 
and assembling in them nearly two hundred 
thousand children, reversing her course, and 
providing only for the most ineflicient 
county action, outside her largest cities; 
North Carolina with a school law upon her 
statute books, but at the close of the last 
year, not a school in the country districts, 
directly under the aaspices of the State law ; 
South Carolina but slightly in advance; 
Georgia with her legislation where it was 
before the war; Alabama, though with a 
free school system, and one hundred and 
sixty thousand pupils enrolled, yet with the 
whole so connected with the old order of 
private schools, as to rob it of much of its 
freedom of action, and prevent its highest 
usefulness; Florida with a system partly 
organized, the Legislature adjourning after 
its late winter session without making any 
provision for the levy of the school tax ; 
Mississippi just writing its school law ; 
Arkansas with an eflflcient system, but the 
schools only partially organized ; Louisiana 
with a system adapted to efficiency, but not 
more than seventy-five schools reported, 
outside of New Orleans, at the date of the 
last report; Texas without legislation, the 
Senate refusing to confirm the Supeiin- 
tendent nominated by the Governor— all 
over this Southern section, not only lack of 
educational sentiment, but positive hos- 
tility to instruction and instrxictors : when 
he observes these facts, and the neglected 
condition of education where the United 
States are directly responsible, as we have 
already noticed, and reflects that the census 
of 1860, out of an adult population of 15,183,- 
580, gives 2,952,239 not able to read and write, 
and out of 11,210,144 children of school age, 
reports 5,529,772 — or about one-half— who 
do not attend school, need we be surprised 
if he has some misgivings about how the 
ibattle is going? 

Does his heart sink within him when he 
contemplates these darker facts ? Let him 
recall the scene at Marengo. The two 
great armies had toiled and surged amid 
the smoke and roar and shot of cannon and 



1 musketry, the cavalry charge and the hor- 
rors of the dead and dying ; points had been 
lost and won ; the Napoleonic destiny 
seemed to have forsaken the French stand- 
ards. "When the Great Commander called 
a council of his marshals, passing his in- 
quiries one to another, each in some form 
acknowledged his conviction of defeat, 
when turning to one specially trusted, he 
inquired, " what think you of the battle?" 
The day was already considerably passed ; 
pulling out his watch and noting the hour, 
the Marshal answered, " Yes, the battle is 
lost, but there is time enough to win an- 
other." The council was dissolved, new 
orders issued, the spirit of victory possessed 
the French forces and the battle was won. 

Friends, educators of America, does the 
duty of tho hour call us here in council 
over the conflict which rages between light 
and darkness? In answer to its pressing 
questions, does some one, weighed down 
with the conviction of the unquestionable 
evils of ignorance already experienced 
point to the fact that five years, or a school 
generation, have so far been lost in the re- 
gions swept over by the late war, and the 
friends of education by so much put to dis- 
advantage? Does another point to the va- 
riety of races already composing the Ameri- 
can people, and declare that a harmony 
and homogeniety sufHcient for national ac- 
tion is impossible according to all the 
lights of history ? Does another declare 
that the struggle with the effete elements 
of European civilization has been all that 
we can stand, and with pallor and trem- 
bling whisper that 'tis vain to hope for suc- 
cess in the face-to-face encounter with the 
ossified civilization of the Orient, embraced 
and sustained as it is by stolid peoples 
outnumbering many times our own, from 
among whom China alone could send to 
our shores one-tenth of her population — a 
number hardly missed there but fully equal 
to the whole of ours ? Does another find 
reason for further and irretrievable disaster 
izi the conflicts between free and papal re- 
ligions, between Christianity and Pagan- 
ism, the common school going down amid 
the hostilities of dogmas and the indiffer- 
ence of its friends? Does another exclaim : 
Yes, suppose all these difflculties should 
be overcome, and one free Christian civih- 
zation fully possess the land : its geogra- 
phical vastness, its cold north and sunny 
south, its iron-ribbed Appalachian and 
golden-veined Rocky chain of mountains 
present natural causes forcing differences 
of body, mind and habit, which the annals 
of mankind record as incompatible with 
sufficient harmony in laws, manners and 
customs to constitute, for any length of 
time, national utility? 

Does not the spirit of the hour, admitting 
all these facts and possibilities of stern en- 
counter, thrill us with the declaration that, 
whatever has been lost in the past, there is 
time enough yet for victory? With a few 
exceptions the law of the States from which 



16 



slavery lately excluded universal education 
have been changed and adapted to the in- 
troduction of vigorous systems. The States 
most advanced are fullest of efforts for pro- 
gress, Massachusetts, in the interest of her 
artisans, just now enacting that drawing 
shall be taught in certain city schools. The 
first condition of success, the knowledge of 
our necessities, is taking possession of the 
public mind. The instruction of every 
child in the country in our mother tongue 
furnishes an all-pervading medium of com- 
munication, and opens every mind, will, 
conscience, judgment, imagination to the 
same facts, opinions and considerations. 
Foreigners of every clime may come here, 
and their children, whatever other lan- 
guage they know, will s^Deak and write 
English. The unities of truth in every 
science and art will be within the reach of 
all minds. Forgetting none of the physical 
conditions of national greatness and unity, 
we trust the future of America more to in- 



tellectual and moral considerations — a one- 
ness of conscience as respects God and 
man, through her great purpose of liberty, 
rendering laws and insfitutions homoge- 
neous, lifting all her people out of the 
miasixia of prejudice into the healthful and 
invigorating atmosphere of intelligence 
and virtue, filling the land with activities 
and enterprises which through the inter- 
communication by storm and lightning 
render futile all material barriers so fatal 
to progress in the past, and keeping up an 
interchange of thought, sentiment and 
population, the assurance of growth normal 
to itself and equal to the task of any ab- 
sorption Providence may require. 

Thus, living her own great national 
Christian life, America may teach other 
nations how to live, and we may confidently 
await the future of education, 

"As a cliild drops some pebble small 
Down a deep well and hears it fall, 
Smiling." 



The Committee appointed to report on the address of Gen. John Eaton, Na- 
tional Commissioner of Education, through their chairman, Prof. "W. E. Crosby, of 
Davenport, Iowa, submitted the following resolutions, which were adopted : — 

Resolved, That we heartily approve the views and recommendations therein 
so ably stated and urged. 

Resolved, That we respectfully petition Congress to make a larger appropria- 
tion of money to meet what seems to us the first claims of general education upon 
the National Bureau. 

Resolved, That General Eaton, together with the Presiding Officers of this 
Association, be a Committee to press the matter here referred to upon the attention 
of Conofress. 



17 



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